Political

Invaluable is life, and immeasurable is liberty. Yet our liberties are being weighed, they are being measured, and our liberties are most assuredly found wanting. James Madison, who stated “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations”, is still correct.

Much like any abusive relationship, victims of the trespass remain unaware of the subtle, gradual implementation of control, which is entirely by design.

Sometimes, the abuser slips up.

Our political system has done this very thing. This year has been a wakeup call for the political non-committals. Admittedly, I was among these ranks. Having a general disdain for politics, a dirty game, prompted my complete abstention from the process. This election cycle has forced a reevaluation of that abstention.

Sitting out of this game has consequences. In fact, nobody can truly sit out of this particular game. We become the most vulnerable participants of the game when we believe we are sitting out. Our liberties are played like pawns, slowly snatched away, until our abuser triumphantly declares a checkmate. This is the price of apathy.

We are left with a choice: We play, or we get played.

“But our voices don’t count” is the most common excuse for choosing not to play. Yet, an army of non-participants is still an army, and arguably the most powerful type of army for those who seek to abuse. What if that army slowly began finding their voices?

The collective must collect. Have we so easily forgotten what enough ants can do to the mighty grasshopper? Our abusers derive their power from the mentality of helplessness. Grateful is an unusual, yet fitting term to describe what is happening in our country right now. Grateful are we who are watching the abusers slip up. Grateful are we that violent and sudden usurpations are a frightening possibility. These transgressions have awoken a new movement in liberty, and I am now a voice in that movement.

The time to choose has never been so critical. By choosing complacency, we abdicate control of our liberties. By choosing complacency, we abandon our voice. Complacency is unexpressed permission for trespass.

It is time to choose. Where do you stand? There are no sidelines in this game- only hard lines to be drawn.

The fire of Liberty still burns. Your voice can be the breath that feeds the flames.

Choosing silence extinguishes that flame, leaving us all in eventual darkness.

I’ve heard since the Convention that we need to put Pistolgate behind us. Austin Petersen has encouraged us, his supporters, to put it behind us and come together to support the party in hopes of ballot access because of the loathing in the country for the old party candidates.I had just about convinced myself to do all that…and then this drops today.

Moments after he won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination, Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, was handed a peace offering — a replica of one of George Washington’s pistols — by runner-up Austin Petersen.

“You have my sword, and my gun,” said Petersen.

Cameras rolling, Johnson accepted the gift. Then he watched Petersen tell delegates to oppose Bill Weld, the former Massachusetts governor Johnson had enticed to run for vice president, whose past views against marijuana legalization are seen as a deal-breaker for many orthodox libertarians.

Johnson is not so much about orthodoxy. In a snit as he walked out, he tossed the gun in the garbage. For days afterward, a busy network of libertarian blogs investigated the story, and got a confession. Fox News even ran with it.

“It wasn’t out of character,” said Johnson. “Maybe, what was out of character was doing it in a public way, where I kind of, sort of knew that it would be seen. In character would have been to do that in private. But to me, hypocrisy” — endorsing Johnson but not his running mate — “is the unforgivable sin.”

I wish I knew what hypocrisy the Governor is talking about. When Petersen endorsed Johnson, the Vice President nomination hadn’t happened yet. Was Weld a lock? No one really knew. I suppose in the eyes of the Johnson camp it was a lock but the rest of us were hoping and praying for a Sharpe and some were hoping for a Dearn but that proved to be false advertising.

It was hard enough to put such disrespect behind me to even work for Johnson’s ballot access in Kentucky. As I write this, I’m pretty sure that won’t happen either. I haven’t cared for Johnson’s demeanor throughout this entire campaign. His lackadaisical participation in the various debates, his complete abdication of the “party leader” role he won in 2012, and last but not least the behavior of some of his supporters has been very Trump-esque. Many of those same supporters are now saying the same things we hear in the old parties. “Support the Party!” and “We have to be pragmatic about this!”. Yeah well…I was pragmatic. I gave ground on issues in politics all of my adult life until 2010 when I had no more room to give. Since then I have been tacking further and further away from these “pragmatic” ideas and closer to a pure Individual Liberty model. I suppose this is the final step.

Unless something dramatic happens between now and election day, this may well be the first time in my voting life where I cannot and will not support any candidate for President…OR…I will go full on Cloward-Piven and vote for the WORST possible candidate in hopes that the winner and the following 4 years will wake more people up to the fact that Progressivism is a poison, that identity politics is a cancer, and that fidelity to an ideology and not giving on core principles is a virtue. I will wear the label of “Purist” like a badge of honor as it is hissed at me by those who care more about winning some mythical prize than advancing the radical notion that we own ourselves and we owe NOTHING to Caesar except what is Caesar’s.

Topics:Liberty |
Comments Off on Almost…ALMOST THERE…and then he had to go there…

I and others have been made aware of an incident in Orlando following the Libertarian Convention that may be of interest to the sons and daughters of Liberty amongst us. Whether or not it will impact your vote is strictly based on your commitment to your Principles. In my mind Principles trump ballot access…but others may disagree…

So…lemme see if I got this right. North Carolina passes a bill into law, the Feds take issue with the law and sue North Carolina, North Carolina sues them right back, and then the Feds threaten to halt Federal Funding to North Carolina while this is adjudicated? Ya know…I don’t really care what the primary issue is at this point, AG Lynch basically threatened EVERYONE in North Carolina when she said they reserved the right to withhold funding to Public Safety agencies in the Tarheel State. In the same presser this afternoon she compared this issue to the Emancipation Proclamation. WOW. Just…wow. I just can’t even begin to address all the stupid in that.

On the issue itself. Folks, we have existing laws to use against people who violate our community standards. If I walk into the men’s room at a local store and treat that public restroom like the football team locker room then I can probably expect to fall victim to those laws…as well as a righteous beatdown. I have seen men bring their daughters into the Men’s room because they were too young to be left alone outside. I’ve watched mothers take their young sons into the Women’s room for the same reason. It is mom and dad’s responsibility to protect their children from whatever it is that might threaten them whether that is faulty plumbing or people wishing to visit violence upon them. No law is going to prevent bad actors from doing their work. Why on earth do we need one now?

I honestly don’t get it.

I do understand the AG and her Justice Department. They are bulling North Carolina into compliance and to hell with North Carolina’s 10th Amendment rights. This is not in ANYWAY a Civil Rights issue and I’m not sure there is anything to protect citizens from. If the AG follows through with her rhetoric and actually suspends funding to the Public Safety in North Carolina….wow. “That’s a nice Public Safety agency you have there…shame if something happened to it.”

Topics:General |
Comments Off on North Carolina “Pottygate” and Federal Threats

Five years and five months ago I abandoned this blog. I was busy with the Tea Party and was writing for a few other outlets and just couldn’t justify the time here. Now, in the wake of the Megalomaniac Primary contests of the GOP and DEM parties I find myself with much to say and no real way to express myself without also going to jail.

Much changes with time. I was once a devoted GOP member who played the R versus D game with the fervor of a collegiate or professional ball sport fan. Then I realized that there is far FAR more at stake here than just a “win”. Elections bring us new “leaders” who can influence our civil lives for generations to come. Elections, when working within a particular party, are about advancing the philosophy of that party. Somewhere we have gotten away from that and now we see the ultimate result. Clinton and Trump are cut from the exact same cloth and have absolutely no difference between them yet the Rs and Ds are clamoring to support their respective megalomaniac as if their very lives depended on it. Each party points to the other and screams “EVIL!”. They rely on the obligatory response of name calling or agreement rather than espousing anything at all that they may actually believe in. We saw this in 2014 with Kentucky’s Senate election where Senator McConnell, Kentucky Secretary of State Grimes, and Libertarian David Patterson were at odds. McConnell’s entire campaign was about demonizing Grimes and SecState Grimes’ campaign was all about demonizing McConnell. It was only David Patterson who had any serious discussion in the entire election yet the Rs and Ds fell into their respective camps because “JUST WIN BABY!”. McConnell of course won and proceeded to provide the President everything that he wanted. I find it interesting that another claim of McConnell’s campaign during the election is that he would stop the President….yet he never even tried until the next election cycle ramped up and he refused even a hearing of Judge Garner for the SCOTUS position. Strange isn’t it? Or maybe not.

Friends, there are now only two options in this 2016 Presidential Election. Self serving megalomaniacs who have no interest whatever in advancing the ideas of the Founders…and those of us who earnestly desire the Liberty that so many have died to defend. Neither Trump nor Clinton have any clue what Individual Liberty is about. They simply don’t care about the people of this Country, what we have endured, or what we are about. The United States is the only country to ever grace this celestial rock who has had at its core from the beginning the idea of individual Liberty. There is no other country on the planet that hold the INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN as sovereign. However today we see as the POTUS election front runners two people who have no track record of representing that idea and no policy position that might advance that idea. How is this possible?

The United States has been incredibly successful over its lifespan. We started out as a small rebellious colony of Great Britain and with in 30 years after declaring independence, defeated Great Britain again. Half a century later we had a quarrel over whether or not the several states could independently separate from the Union but that didn’t slow us down when faced with another fight against Spain when we declared by Right of Arms that we are a World Power. We have retained that “title” through World War 1 and World War 2. Ever since we have been looked to for International Leadership and are commonly considered one of, if not THE, Super Power of the world. While all that fighting and diplomacy was going on we witnessed the growth of national level sporting concerns such as basketball, baseball, and football at both the collegiate level and professional level. While we are not busy killing our enemies we spend our time arguing feverishly over our favorite teams. The ONLY thing that matters to the average American anymore is WINNING. Win the Game. Win the Promotion. Win the Trial. Win the Lottery. Win the Door Prize. JUST WIN BABY! Sadly that has now extended to our political leadership and even though the two leading candidates are a game show host and a not-quite-indicted Criminal, the Rs and Ds are falling in line behind their “team” to JUST WIN BABY without any regard whatsoever to what these candidates have said, been involved in, or their personal behavior.

I was done with all this nonsense in 2010. I had learned my lesson playing the R versus D game and had returned my thinking to the Founder’s ideas of Individual Liberty and Equality under the Law. In 2012 I found myself considering Romney for the Presidency but upon entering the booth I chose the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, because I knew that he stood for the things I believed in. I wasn’t so sure if that was what Romney stood for because all I heard from him was “Stop Obamacare” and “Strong national defense”. There was no core principle discussions from him…just the tired old rhetoric of “Obama is EVIL” and “I can defeat Obama”. I had finally decided to unplug from this mess.

It was about that time that I found a new online publication called The Libertarian Republic. The Editor and Founder was a lad named Austin Petersen and I always enjoyed his wit and thoughts on the matters of the day. I started following him on Facebook and found just the right level of snark, fun, and political acumen that I could get behind. When he floated the idea of running for the Libertarian nomination for the Presidency I was excited. I was excited for the first time in a very very long time about a political candidate.

I have since registered as a Libertarian in Kentucky and am now working for the campaign. I support Austin Petersen for the Libertarian Nomination for President of the United States.

For those of you who may not have time to sit down with a book but always seem to have an MP3 player rolling, here’s a couple selections worthy of your time:

Federalist Papers: http://www.archive.org/details/federalist_papers_librivox
The Federalist Papers were a series of pamphlets written mostly anonymously at the time to convince the people, of New York specifically but everyone generally, to ratify the Constitution. Authors were later confirmed to be a collection of Radical Revolutionaries like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. For a deeper understanding of our Constitution the Federalist Papers are required reading or, in this case, listening.

Anti-Federalist Papers: http://www.archive.org/details/antifederalist_0707_librivox
The Anti-Federalist Papers were a series of pamphlets written mostly anonymously at the time attempting to convince people that the strong Federal Government outlined in the Consitution would end up being an albatross around the Liberties of the people. I recently finished a study of the Anti-Federalist papers and…wow…these guys were prophetic. As is the case in most things, there is a happy medium between the idealism in the Federalist Papers and rampant cynicism of the Anti-Federalist papers but, unfortunately, we as a Nation failed to find it. The issues raised in the Anti-Federalist papers are exactly what we are dealing with today.

5000 Year Leap: http://www.nccs.net/5000-year-leap/_jkgFoe95jlsf4poG/
This book was written by W. Cleon Skousen. In 1971, Skousen founded a non-profit educational foundation, “The Freeman Institute” which sought to provide students a place to read both sides of any political issue from original sources. In 1982, the institute became the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS), a national organization headquartered in Malta, Idaho.(WikiPedia). The book details how the philosophical aspects of the Constitution came to be. Where the Federalist Papers discusses the debate about the ideas, this book details the birth of the ideas themselves.

All of these are freebies and well worth the time and effort to grab and listen to.

Topics:General |
Comments Off on Time to Educate ourselves – Free Audio Books

This is a joke. Mr. Nobel is once again spinning in his grave. This is a far cry from the intended purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize…a President having accomplished absolutely nothing in his brief 10 months in office beyond inviting known marxists and pedophiles into the Whitehouse Staff doesn’t deserve such an award. What he deserves is a kick in the pants.

This is actually an opportunity for President Obama. He could refuse the award claiming he hadn’t had the same kind of impact on World Peace as certain other world leaders. You know, leaders like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Imadinnerjacket, or Mullah Omar. This would allow him to show his character and continue sucking up to the world’s most vicious despots.

Humana sent a note to its customers holding Medicare Advantage policies explaining the impact on the health insurance reform plan. They told their customers that benefits would but cut as part of the plan. HotAir reports the Congressional budget office tells us today that Humana is correct. Unfortunately for Humana, the Administration isn’t concerned about truth so much as the protection of this aspect of the President’s agenda.

Humana received a direct threat from Medicare (under Health and Human Services which is headed by Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas). Medicare explained that Humana had tried to confuse and mislead their customers and therefore the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL BE INVESTIGATING ALL MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PROVIDERS.

Senator McConnell has some words to say about this:

Now, for anyone who reads my stuff they know that I’ve had some serious issues with my Senior Senator. His handling of President Bush’s Amnesty bill was tragic. His utter lack of leadership on the Senate floor has been a burr under my saddle for quite a while. THIS speech however certainly wins the Senator some points from me.

Fight the good fight Senator McConnell! Fight to protect our God given unalienable right to Free Speech!

I’m squarely with Krauthammer on this. We have no cart and we have no horse. General McChrystal has privately called for a surge in Afghanistan. That report was leaked to the legacy media without a hint of objection from DOD. (Leakers of foreign policy material should be shot, allowed to heal, then shot again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.) The leaked report was issued to the President on August 30. Not a word from the President on it since that time although he HAS had time to yuk it up with Letterman and his legacy media pals.

I found this link in the article section at Hotair. I spent a good 30 minutes crafting my comment there. Ms. Vilar seems to be concerned for her safety after publishing her book. I will not be a party to threats directed at Ms. Vilar and pre-emptively condemn anyone who might cause her any heartache whatever.

As I said in my comment at HotAir, the premise of her book angers me and I feel like she has slapped my wife and I squarely in the face.

Over the past couple weeks President Obama has been making the rounds on the various legacy media outlets trying to pitch his case for his Health Insurance Reform plan. He doesn’t seem to understand that the case has been made and rejected by the American people. Perhaps he does understand it and now he is simply trying to force his case by getting angrier and angrier himself. President Obama is no fool. He knows that the more he presses Americans the more we will rhetorically fight back. The more we fight back, the more he trots out the “we should be more civil in our discourse” line. Which is a pitiful attempt to change the subject. We witnessed an excellent example of this during the President’s speech before the joint session of Congress.

It seems that the President wants civility in OUR discourse but doesn’t intend to model that behavior on his own. In his speech he wasted little time on civility as he labeled all of us who disagree with his proposal as liars and extremists. When Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) called him on it during the speech we all had to endure the next 48 hours of “beat up on Joe” even though he immediately apologized for his inappropriate outburst. Please understand that the bulk of the outrage we saw after the speech was a political contrivance for the sole purpose of demonstrating the “lack of civility” the President and his cohorts(chiefly Speaker Pelosi) have been whining about for quite a while. What Joe Wilson did was wrong. It was a slap in the face to the Office of the President. It was wrong when the Democrats booed President Bush and it’s wrong now. Only difference is we expect it from this breed of Democrat. Conservatives hold ourselves to a higher standard of behavior. A standard that Mr. Wilson knew he had violated before the second echo of his words in the chamber.

Changing the subject is the last defense for the loser of an argument. We’ve all used the tactic with the same result if the opposition is worth their rhetorical salt. Even if successful, the loser of the argument is still a bit tainted for his effort. How tainted is the debater who, rather than simply changing the subject, resorts to personal attacks and name calling? I’m not talking about the Python-esque name calling of “Silly Kniggit” or personal attacks of “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries”. I’m talking about tossing out the racist grenade.

It seems that any opposition to the President’s policies is now labeled as racist. We have lied about death panels. We are heartless for the however many million Americans who currently have no health insurance. We are in bed with the insurance companies. But WE are the ones who are supposed to be civil. The arrogance is astounding.

It seems that the more the President is on TV, the more we get lectured to about being civil in our lieing, heartless, corrupt laden discourse. Mr. President, we are not stupid. We are your boss. You cannot brow beat us and we will not tolerate or participate in your 1984-esque media exposure. Your rhetorical skills, however formidable, will not when our support unless the rhetoric makes sense to us lieing, heartless, corrupt legions.

Topics:General |
Comments Off on Presidential Exposure and our National Discourse